Mobile telephone systems include a variety of services and functions beyond simple direct voice communication. Once scarce and expensive, mobile communication devices are now so common that most people own at least one. Mobile phones allow users to communicate from virtually anywhere. Many mobile phone customers, however, maintain a fixed-line phone at their home, in addition to having a mobile phone.
An inconvenience commonly associated with having a mobile communication device and local phone service is that the subscriber receives service from two different service providers. This typically means that the subscriber receives two bills, one for mobile service and one for service to the home or business.
In some countries, the local exchange carrier (LEC) owns the physical lines, whether copper, coaxial cable, or fiber-optic, that connects homes and businesses to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Whether the LEC will share those lines with other service providers is often unclear. In some countries, antitrust laws prohibit mobile service providers from providing local exchange service. In the absence of government regulations, property laws often allow the LEC to prohibit other service providers from using the LEC's lines to provide competitive services. Thus, by government regulation or property law, it is often difficult for communication service providers to compete with a LEC.
One technique used to circumvent this barrier involves the use of an analog telephone adapter (ATA). Utilizing an ATA, consumers can convert their plain old telephone service (POTS) telephone or fax machine into a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) VoIP telephone to take advantage of Internet telephony services.
SIP is an IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) protocol for VoIP and, other text and multimedia sessions, e.g., instant messaging, video, online games and other services. SIP is an application-layer control signaling protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants, which sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences.
The consumer can simply plug an existing analog telephone into a connector (e.g., an RJ-11 socket) on the ATA, and the ATA provides voice and tone to the POTS telephone. The ATA also includes a network connector (e.g., an RJ-45 jack) that facilitates connection to an Ethernet port for communications over an IP network, e.g., a LAN. Thus, using the ATA it is possible to connect a conventional telephone to a remote VoIP server. The ATA communicates with the remote VoIP server using a VoIP protocol, for example, H.323 (an ITU-T standard that defines call control, channel setup, and CODEC specifications for transmitting voice over, e.g., a packet network), SIP, MGCP (Media Gateway Control Protocol), or IAX (Inter Asterisk eXchange) which provides control and transmission of streaming media over an IP network, and encodes and decodes the voice signal using a voice CODEC. Since an ATA communicates directly with a VoIP server, no software is required to be run on a personal computer.
However, these conventional adapters and systems fall short of allowing wireless service providers to enter the local telephone service market. Thus, there is a substantial unmet need for a system that overcomes the above problems, as well as providing additional benefits.